The more I read about the Iran Plot, the more I am disgusted and shocked at the Obama Administration. The story has holes in it that make me shudder in the same way I did reading about Iraq’s WMD and seeing shaky US intelligence shipped around the world.

Not only are most Iranian experts registering skepticism, but now legal bloggers are adding their two cents worth. From The , Mary Wheeler writes:

The details provided about the $100,000 in the complaint also do not implicate Quds Force as strongly as they might. The complaint describes an unnamed person calling Arbabsiar to tell him the money would be transferred to “Individual #1.” And it describes Arbabsiar telling the informant that Individual #1 had received the money the morning before the first taped July 14 conversation. Then, it describes the money being sent from two different “foreign entities” through a Manhattan bank into an FBI account. The complaint doesn’t even specify that these two foreign entities were Iranian, much less tied to Quds Force.

Furthermore, the complaint doesn’t describe who Individual #1 is, though the way that the complaint is written suggests that he or she was not a member of Quds Force: three Quds Force members are described as “Iranian Officials” in the complaint and Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani is named explicitly. More curiously, Individual #1, who allegedly served as middleman for the down payment on the planned assassination, was neither charged for his role nor was he among the five people for this operation by the Treasury Department. What the complaint describes about this key piece of evidence, in other words, is money being transferred from someone not even charged in this case to the FBI. But if the plot began with the Quds Force hatching it in Iran and extended to Arbabsiar acting on their behalf in the U.S., and if the U.S. government appears to be either charging or sanctioning everyone involved, why would this middleman, Individual #1, go unnamed and untouched?

This next quote is from , a site I’ve never read before that was linked in a comment section from one I read everyday. I can’t vouch for it, but the items it raises can all be fact-checked easily. In essence, this article questions whether used-car salesman Arbabsiar may have been used to sting his cousin in the Al Quds force. It poses the possibility that Arnbabsiar first implicated himself in a drug deal, mentioned that he knew Reza Shalai to the DEA and was then used by the FBI to entrap his Iranian cousin.

But the suggestion that forensic examination of the wire transfers could somehow show who had approved them is misleading. The wire transfers were from two separate non-Iranian banks in a foreign country, according to the FBI’s account. It would be impossible to deduce who approved the transfer by looking at the documents.

One Response to More on So-Called Iranian Plot

At , Joe Lauria says, “Calling the non-existent device to blow up the phony restaurant a “weapon of mass destruction” in the complaint is also misleading and politically charged. WMD usually mean chemical, biological and nuclear weapons—none of which the complaint suggests would be used.”

Yet on Sunday, 16 October 2011, Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Mike Rogers, said, “I wouldn’t wait too much longer. A nation that’s willing to politically assassinate an ambassador on U.S. soil with a nuclear weapon is incredibly dangerous.” ()

According to Google. no one has picked up on or commented on this. It’s an egregious escalation of language that, as far as I know, has not been withdrawn. Similar accusations led to the invasion of Iraq. Is anyone paying attention here?